It is one of the big issues of the campaign, but the National Party is rejecting criticism it is not doing enough to combat poverty, saying the problem was worse in Labour's early years of government after 1999.
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) launched its report "Our children, our choice" yesterday at Mt Roskill Kindergarten in Auckland on Tuesday.
It wants political parties to sign up to more interventionist policies, including extending in-work tax credits to beneficiary families.
But Prime Minister John Key dismissed suggestions beneficiary families should get more money. He said getting them into work was more important.
“If you are in work then your household income will rise. So if you take the example of a solo parent with one child, their household income, if they go to 20 hours work on the minimum wage, and that's their total paid employment, is $100 more each week than if they're on the equivalent of the DPB.”
We asked Toby Morris to illustrate some of the impacts of child poverty, including education, health, and the future.
Mr Key also disputed how serious poverty was, saying children living below the poverty line isn’t new.
“The Labour Party might want to claim that, but if you go back and look at the same numbers I look at, on the same surveys I look at, the numbers of children living in poverty, or below the line, were actually larger under Labour in the early years when they first became the government in in 1999.”
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But Labour children's spokesperson Jacinda Ardern said her party's extension of Working for Families tax credits did a lot to lift children out of poverty.
“There are other groups who have said that things like the in-work tax credit do make a difference for families and there are other ways to perhaps address some of the issues that have been raised today. Our best start payment for instance goes to all families living on under $50,000 with children under the age of three, so 50,000 children in poverty benefit from that.”
